Six Degrees of Maynard Ferguson

[bostontricky]

Awhile ago, a friend and I were talking about how certain musicians seemed to have played with everyone under the sun, I think it had something to do with a jazz history class he was taking called “Armstrong, Parker and Coltrane” and I remarked, well, that’s a pretty good starting point, because everyone in jazz has played with someone who’d played with one of those guys. And then we took it a step further, and wound up at Six Degrees of Maynard Ferguson, the theory that any musician can be connected to Maynard Ferguson in six steps.

We selected Maynard for a number of reasons: we were looking for someone familiar to both of us, true, but MF’s recording career began in 1949 and is still active to this day. The Lord discography had him at 287 sessions through 1996; this must be close to 300 today. His musical experience cuts a wide swath through pop and jazz history:

- Late 40s and early 50s work with Jimmy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet, and Stan Kenton

- The 1954 Jam Session with Clifford Brown, Clark Terry, Dinah Washington, Max Roach and others. Mid 50s sessions with Buddy Bregman connect MF with Bing Crosby, drummer Alvin Stoller and others.

- Some West Coast work in the mid 50s with Shorty Rogers, and well as studio work and his initial Birdland Dreambands

- Recorded the “Titan Suite” with Leonard Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic

- His Roulette recordings featured Slide Hampton and Joe Zawinul as well as the more interesting Don Ellis and Jaki Byard (at least in terms of furthering this theory)

- mid 60s bands included the likes of Dusko Goykovich, Charlie Mariano, Lanny Morgan and Roger Kellaway

- Early 70s Columbia efforts were based in the UK

- A couple of tracks in the late 70s for the Indian musician L. Subranamian

- later efforts for Columbia were augmented at first (at Bob James’ urging) by musicians such as James, Chick Corea, George Benson, Eric Gale, Randy Brecker etc; as well as studio musicians such as Alan Rubin, Jerry Hey (who will take you all sorts of places…)

-one of his live recordings from the early 80s included Hugh Ragin. Go figure.

- - - - - - - -

It’s a pretty broad range of musicians: once you expand it to Two Degrees, the range of recorded artists gets exceptionally broad:


MF – Bing Crosby – Louis Armstrong
MF – Max Roach – Charlie Parker
MF – Clifford Brown – Monk
MF – Clark Terry – Ray Charles
MF – Clark Terry – Cecil Taylor
MF – Jimmy Giuffre (or Don Ellis) – Steve Swallow, Paul Bley
MF – Pepper Adams – Coltrane
MF – Roger Kellaway – Elvis, George Harrison
MF – Don Ellis (or Alan Zavod) – Frank Zappa
MF – Chick Corea – Dave Holland
MF – Corea – Jack DeJohnette
MF – Corea – Anthony Braxton
MF – Jerry Hey – Paul McCartney
Jerry Hey will also take you directly to Christina Aguilera, Karen Carpenter, Cher, George Duke, the Jackson 5, Tom Petty, and God save as, Bruce Willis and Yanni.

- - - - -

Three Degrees: a co-worker of mine once played bagpipes on a Boston Pops album, and as such receives a Maynard number of three.

Four Degrees: Avant-garde trumpeter Rajesh Mehta can be accessed by MF – Clark Terry – Cecil Taylor – Paul Lovens – Mehta

- - - - -

As you can see, the web is incredibly large. We tried to link Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, but couldn’t come closer than five steps:

MF – Jerry Hey – Elvis Costello – Brian Eno – Peter Gabriel – NFAK
MF – Jerry Hey – David Crosby – Neil Young – Eddie Vedder – NFAK

Anyone care to work out a shorter chain here? (Suggestion: L. Subranamian)

[Pete C]

Did you get a grant for this?

[bostontricky]

Pete - this is actually the distillation of a number of posts at an unarchived board, which have since disappeared into the ether.
Although anyone with a good discography could have assembled it in a few minutes...

Wait until you get the baseball version - "Six Degrees of Bill Buckner" which will prove why the Red Sox cannot win the World Series until they divest themselves of certain players. But I'll have to catch pneumonia again to free up research time for that one.

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

bostontricky - I take it you've seen the Parker Number Arts Council Funding letter, if not I won't spoil it for you.

MF - Chick Corea - Dave Holland - Derek Bailey - Simon H. Fell - Nathaniel Catchpole

hehe

[bostontricky]

MF - Corea - Braxton - Marilyn Crispell - Eddie Prevost - NC also works, but there's got to be a shorter path.

Prevost has worked with Jim O'Rourke, but that probably won't get you any closer. Lol Coxhill? Paul Rutherford? I've read Prevost worked with Howard Riley but can't confirm...

MF - Jaki Byard - Howard Riley - ...

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

I played with Paul Rutherford for about 20 minutes once at a gig we shared the bill at. Ah, yes

Maynard Ferguson - Chick Corea - Dave Holland - Paul Rutherford - Nathaniel Catchpole

Down to five.

[al j]

Nat,

any chance we can jam one of these days so I can get in there?

[MRS]

Maynard Ferguson -- Brownie -- Newk -- Rufus Harley -- me

[Pete C]

MF – Corea – Jack DeJohnette - Elliott Sharp - Pete C

I know that Elliott played with Jack at least once. He had only the nicest things to say about him.

Edit:

Or

MF - Giuffre - Steve Swallow - Bobby Previte - Pete C

Previte also gets you to Butch Morris in 5, and Sharp gets you to Hubert Sumlin in 5, which gets you to Howlin' Wolf in 6, though for all I know there may be some quicker route to Wolf through Phil Upchurch..

[MRS]

MF -- Clark Terry -- Paul Chambers -- Herbie Hancock -- Sly Dunbar -- Dean Fraser --

[bostontricky]

I went to high school with an avant-garde vibist working out of Chicago. Does marching band count?

We're all in this together.

- - - - -

MF - Zawinul - Jaco - Benny Lattimore - PMT

But there's got to be a shorter connection there...I know there's not much to work with there (musically or otherwise), but still. Jerry Hey (Lord God King of the Studio Trumpeters) will take you to hell and back.

[Pete C]

MF – Clifford Brown – Sonny Rollins - Henry Grimes - Sunny Murray - Alexander von Schlippenbach

[bostontricky]

MF - Clark Terry - Cecil Taylor - Paul Lovens - Schlipp...

there's always a shorter way, that's the obscene beauty of this.

[Pete C]

This can be very addictive to a systems analyst. Especially an unemployed one...

[graypencil]

MF > Greg Bissonette > graypencil> Julius LaRosa> Arthur Godfrey

or:

MF > Greg Bissonette> gp > Lou Marini > John Belushi

actually, if you just do these:

MF> Berklee
MF> Univ of N Texas

..you'll have covered about 90% of the working musicians for the past 30 or so years ..

[MRS]

I'm going a little ways back in my past. . .but did Greg Bissonette play with DLR? As in David Lee Roth?

[Jazzooo]

At first, I was really impressed with all the Maynard connections. But what blows my mind is that because I have been fortunate enough to record with a handfull of some killer cats, I am only one or two degrees away from many of the finest musicians of the last 100 years, and only a bit further removed from almost everyone else who has every picked up an instrument, it seems. I always forget how small the world really is.

To Miles and everyone he played with, via Frank Rehak and MIke Stern. (Frank worked with everyone from Dizzy to Harry James to Buddy Rich to John Cage...and Maynard. Mike Stern--well, I can't think of a major fusion jazz player who is more than one or two handshakes from him.)

Peter Erskine connects me to Kenton, Zawinul, Shorter (another Maynard/Miles connection!), Jaco, Marty Ehrlich, Gary Burton, the WDR Band, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and a gazillion others.

Dave Carpenter connects me again to Buddy Rich, Alan Holdsworth, Wayne Shorter, Dave Grusin...and Maynard again!

John Patitucci, Mike Miller, Peter Sprague and Bob Sheppard connect me to zads of players but they all share a major Chick Corea connection...who connects me to Maynard yet again.

I actually think I'm the one to beat in terms of number of connections! I can't think of a legitimate jazz artist that escapes my reach. So why don't I play better than I do?

I wonder if Maynard is sitting at home playing 6 Degrees of Doug...

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

Anyone know of a Maynard/Stevie Wonder date? That would cut it down to four. Beyond that I'm clutching at straws. Although as GrayP indicated, chances are one of my teachers at Berklee played with him, but that shouldn't count for stuff like this - makes it no fun.

Jazzoo, since you're going to go completely beyond the original purpose of the thread *sniff*.

NC - Ibrahima Camara - Stevie Wonder

NC - Ibrahima Camara - Pharoah Sanders - Philly Joe Jones

NC - John Edwards - Evan Parker - Yoko Ono and John Lennon (Evan and John Stevens are apparently featured on the Plastic Ono Band album)

NC- Alan Wilkinson - Peter Brotzmann - Bill Laswell - Peter Gabriel
- or Mick Jagger
- or Bootsy Collins, or Sly Dunbar

Maynard Ferguson -- Brownie -- Newk -- Rufus Harley -- Michael Shaumann - Rufus Harley - Newk - Henry Grimes - Pharoah - Ibramiha Camara - Me

Which means - Shaumann - Harley - Newk - Grimes - Pharoah - Camara - Me. Damn, seven.

OK I don't know about Frank Rehak's connection with Cage (i.e. one or two degrees, but here goes).

Catchpole - Prevost - Wolff - Cage - Rehak - Jazzooo

[al j]

the real challenge IMO is going backwards. Connect Ferg to playing with Vivaldi or some shit and you're in there.

[bostontricky]

MF recorded Bill Russo's "Titan Suite" with Leonard Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic. Someone elsewhere pointed out one of the horns (Wm. Vacchiano) was there when Toscanini was conducting, which makes Toscanini a "2". (David Lee Roth is also a "2", as Schaumann pointed out).

It's a start.

[MRS]

Gary fucking Hoey is a 2.

[graypencil]

Originally posted by Jazzooo
At first, I was really impressed with all the Maynard connections. But what blows my mind is that because I have been fortunate enough to record with a handfull of some killer cats, I am only one or two degrees away from many of the finest musicians of the last 100 years, and only a bit further removed from almost everyone else who has every picked up an instrument, it seems. I always forget how small the world really is.

( snip )

John Patitucci, Mike Miller, Peter Sprague and Bob Sheppard connect me to zads of players but they all share a major Chick Corea connection...who connects me to Maynard yet again.

I actually think I'm the one to beat in terms of number of connections! I can't think of a legitimate jazz artist that escapes my reach. So why don't I play better than I do?

In turn , GrayPencil is connected to Doug thru Patitucci ..and to Sheppard thru Patitucci and Grant Gessman and Steve Houghton ..

and yes , Greg Bissonette DID play with DLR ..for very large digit, I'd think

[cookie]

Thanks to D'Imperio and Mike Dubanowitz, I'm not far away at all.

MF>D'Imperio>Cookie
MF>Dubanowitz>CC

Weird.

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

This would have been funiier at the beginning of the thread, but I'll post it anyway.

Parker Numbers
Internet Performing Arts Database
(An April Fools' joke circular sent to members, 1998)

The Arts Council of England has determined to compile a new Internet Performing Arts Database which will store, update and continually monitor the Parker Numbers of all musicians working in the new music scene. LMC is asked to co-operate with this project by sending a questionnaire to all its members, asking them to specify their Parker Number.

Parker Numbers are a measure of how closely a musician is related to Evan Parker in terms of co-appearances. You calculate a musician's Parker Number like this. Parker is assigned the number 0. Anyone who has appeared in a concert performance with Parker gets Parker Number 1. For example, Parker and Derek Bailey played together in Music Improvisation Company, so Bailey has Parker Number 1.

Next you look to any musician who has not appeared in the same concert performance as Parker, but who has appeared in a concert with someone who has. All these people have Parker Number 2. For example, Min Tanaka has Parker Number 2. He has never performed with Parker, but he has appeared in Bailey's Company; so, as Bailey has Parker Number 1, Tanaka gets Parker Number 1 higher, namely 2. A musician has Parker Number 3 if they were in a concert with someone who was in a concert with someone who was in a concert with Parker, but there is no shorter concert path to Parker. And so on.

The idea for such a list started with Paul Erdos, a Hungarian mathematician, who until he died in 1996 wrote hundreds of research papers with mathematicians around the world. Years ago, mathematicians started to measure their own proximity to the centre of activity in mathematics by calculating their Erdos Number.

Parker Numbers, which are a kind of Erdos Number, are just a simple example of the way graph theory is being used in the new field of data mining. In data mining, researchers sift through masses of data looking for interesting patterns. For instance, if you own a chain of large supermarkets, you will want to know as much as possible about the buying patterns of your customers. If a customer buys, say, bacon, what other things are they most likely to buy (what goes in to the same shopping trolley as bacon, and thus has bacon number 1), and if they buy those other things, what else might they buy (items having bacon number 2? When you know that pattern, you can use it to arrange the goods in your store to increase sales.

Telephone and credit card companies use essentially the same data mining technique to expose fraud. And national security agencies use it to keep a watchful eye on international crime. It can and is increasingly being used to determine patterns in arts funding. Please ensure that each member of the London Music Collective receives a copy of this document.

Evan Parker has been chosen because he has a low Importance Number - the figure computed by taking the weighted average of their Parker Numbers. That is, you multiply each Parker Number by the number of musicians having that number, add all those numbers together, and divide by the total number of musicians. Currently, this means that if you start with Evan Parker himself, you get the calculation (0 x 1) + (1 x 1,267) + (2 x 78,867) = (3 x 149,018) + (4 x 32,094) + (5 x 1,903) + (6 x 299) + (7 x 34) + (8 x 1) ¡Ò (1 + 1,267 + 78.867 + 149.018 + 32,094 + 1,903 + 299 + 34 + 1) = 745986 ¡Ò 263484 = 2.83124.

However, our records are badly in need of updating, and this is where LMC comes in.

Could you kindly ask your members each to calculate their respective Parker Number. It need hardly be said that such calculations will allow the Arts Council of England to reach a far more accurate notion of the relative worth of musicians approaching them for grant monies. As from the next financial year (1999/2000), instead of attempting to make subjective decisions about the value of individual players or groups, and to avoid musicians having to spend time on self-assessment, the Arts Council of England intends to award grants in accordance to musicians' Parker Numbers, so it is important that this research is undertaken.

Yours sincerely
Kathryn McDowell
Music Director

[Enforcer]

Doug,

If I'm not mistaken, Erskine actually played with Ferguson himself. I think they even recorded together in the 70s. I could be wrong, but you know me: I rarely am.

Funnier than you remember,
Larry

[Sergio Zamora]

Nat, are you a PN 2 (via Prevost)?

[mke]

Surely, it can't be long until NC is a PN 1.

[mke]

Which sounds vaguely insulting.

[Ron Thorne]

Welcome back, "Quickdraw Nagel"!

[Jazzooo]

"If I'm not mistaken, Erskine actually played with Ferguson himself. I think they even recorded together in the 70s. I could be wrong, but you know me: I rarely am.
"

You're absolutely right, according to www.petererskine.com. Thank goodness I didn't know that, or I wouldn't have had the chance to drop so many names in a single post!